24 Chapter I. 



reached Greenland in any other way than by the help 

 of such a current conveying the seeds. 



" On the drift-ice in Denmark Strait (between Iceland 

 and Greenland) I have made observations which tend, to 

 the conclusion that this ice too was of Siberian origin. 

 For instance, I found quantities of mud on it, which 

 seemed to be of Siberian origin, or might possibly have 

 come from North American rivers. It is possible, 

 however, to maintain that this mud originates in the 

 glacier rivers that flow from under the ice in the north 

 of Greenland, or in other unknown polar lands ; so that 

 this piece of evidence is of less importance than those 

 already named. 



" Putting all this together, we seem driven to the con- 

 clusion that a current flou<s at sonic point between the 

 Pole and Franz Josef Land jroin the Siberian ^ ire tic 

 Sea to the east coast of Greenland. 



" That such must be the case we may also infer in 

 another way. If we regard, for instance, the polar cur- 

 rent that broad current which flows down from the 

 unknown polar regions between Spitzbergen and Green- 

 land and consider what an enormous mass of water 

 it carries along, it must seem self-evident that this 

 cannot come from a circumscribed and small basin, but 

 must needs be gathered from distant sources, the more 

 so as the Polar Sea (so far as we know it) is remarkably 

 shallow everywhere to the north of the European, Asiatic 

 and American coasts. The polar current is no doubt 



